"My family have been singing here for generations," he told me. "But now these Arab madrasa students come here and create trouble. They tell us that what we do is wrong. Sometimes arguments break out - even fist fights and brawls.
"Before the Afghan war there was nothing like this. It only began when Reagan and the Saudis starting sending jihadis to Peshawar. Before that the Pushtuns here loved Sufism. Now trouble happens more and more frequently."
"What do you do?" I asked.
"What can we do?" he replied. "We pray that right will overpower wrong. But our way is pacifist. We love. We never fight. When these Arabs come here I don't know what to do."
I thought of the shrine over the weekend as further violence shook Saudi Arabia. Following on from the kidnapping and murder last month of 22 expatriates in Khobar, gun battles in the streets of Jeddah and the murder in broad daylight of a BBC cameraman, this weekend has bought further violence to the kingdom. One American has been kidnapped and another murdered. The Foreign Office has begun the process of pulling out non-essential staff.
Things are clearly coming to a head in Saudi Arabia. It is not yet exactly falling apart, but we are close to seeing the mass exodus of the expatriate community that runs its oil business, with a disastrous effect on oil prices.
On the BBC's Today programme last week, the Saudi ambassador, Prince Turki al Faisal, expressed his grief at the death of the cameraman and swore that the authorities were doing everything to arrest the culprits - despite growing evidence of collusion between the Saudi national guard and the militants. But at no point did the interviewer ask Turki about his role in supporting jihadi groups while head of Saudi intelligence, nor was it mentioned that Turki has admitted having had five meetings with Osama bin Laden in the past. Indeed, al-Qaida was in some respects a creation of Saudi intelligence during the Afghan jihad against the Soviets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/saudi/story/0,11599,1238198,00.html
